A fine line on school searches

There have always been concerns that the soaring rhetoric of Homer and Aristotle are not the only high on which some young people at Algonquin Regional are riding, but when one young man nonchalantly lighted up a joint in one of the school’s bathrooms recently those concerns turned to alarm.

“That is being a little bit flamboyant,” observed Northboro Police Chief Mark Leahy, who in collaboration with school officials is about to conduct what will be a first in the school district — a canine-assisted drug search of the high school’s interior and parking lots.

This is not a step taken lightly by the chief.

Students attending U.S. public schools are protected from unreasonable searches by the Fourth Amendment, and random searches using dogs to sniff students’ belongings will not sit well with some.

Yet, Chief Leahy’s decision is a reflection of the increasing struggle by educators and the communities in which they work to balance students’ right to privacy with school safety.

The Worcester Police Department has never done any such searches here in the city, and is not looking to, according to Police Chief Gary Gemme. However, should he be asked by Worcester school officials, he would evaluate the request, but “any decision to conduct this type of search would require a compelling public safety interest,” he said.

Chief Leahy believes he has such compelling interests in Northboro — school safety and the lives of young people.

“People are going to beat me up on both sides of this,” he said of doing a drug search at the school.

“But my message is this: If you make the decision to do illegal drugs and you do it in your home, in your car or in the woods, it might be hard for me to control that, but you can’t do it here at the school.”

His priority here, according to the chief, is prevention, rather than punishment.

Indeed, Chief Leahy told the students in February of the planned drug searches, and that they would be given the time and date of the first search in advance. True to his word, the chief announced Tuesday that Northboro and Southboro police departments, assisted by the Massachusetts state police K-9 unit, will be at the school at precisely 9 a.m. Thursday to search the interior of the school and the vehicles in the parking lots.

“Our goal is to remove illegal drugs from the campus, period,” he said in a press release announcing Thursday’s search.

When he met with the students in February, he brought a state trooper and one of the drug-sniffing dogs with him, and he told the students then that if they were “holding stuff in the school, they needed to get it out today.”

Of course, if any student is idiotic enough to bring drugs to the school on Thursday and is caught, he or she will be facing criminal prosecution, the chief said.

Still, he takes it as a good sign that high school students applauded his frank and open discussion with them in February, and he hopes to enlist their cooperation in helping him help them make good decisions in their young lives.

He is also promising future, unscheduled searches, which could lead to him having to make a case in court against instead of for a student. He hopes it doesn’t come to that.

“I’m not naive, and I am not trying to save the world, but good kids make dumb mistakes sometimes,” he said.

“So this is not about making a bunch of arrests, because I don’t want my message to be lost. I have been a cop for 34 years, and I have looked at this as a parent and as a grandparent, and I sincerely believe I have a role as a community caretaker.”

I have my concerns about random searches of young people in schools, but the prudent and preventive approach being taken here by Chief Leahy deserves consideration.